Peru Chiclayo Mission 9/2013-9/2015

Monday, December 30, 2013

This week was pretty awesome! Although the missionary work really slows
down during this time of the year, mainly because all the people are on
vacation, we had some fun times!

On Tuesday night before Christmas we went to some other elders pensions
house and we stayed the night there with two other elders! Its a tradition here
to eat at midnight so we all stayed up and helped make the food and told stories
and that was fun! We didn't end up eating at 12 but it was still pretty late when
we ate. Then at 12 we went on the roof and people started to light off fireworks
everyone and although fireworks aren't legal here they sell them all over the
place and everyone buys them! So there a ton of fireworks! We ended up going to
bed at like 2 30 in the morning which was not good because we had to get up
early the next morning to travel to the mission office. All the 8 zones within
Chiclayo all met together at the office for a Christmas activity of the 25th.
First there was a soccer tournament and although we didn't win it was still
pretty fun, we also played some volleyball too! Then we went into the chapel and
every zone had organized their own little talent shows and we all performed and
our zone, Chiclayo Central, was the best out of all of them and it was pretty
funny too! After the talent show the people who are from the different parts of
the world in our mission got into groups and did a little culture presentation
in front of the mission. For example there people in our mission that are from
Colombia got up and told us about their country and then Chile, and Honduras,
and Bolivia, and Uruguay and so on and so forth and that was really cool to see
some of the pictures from the other places. A lot of them had their songs to
sing from their country and some of the songs were so cool! After that we ate
lunch and for lunch we had Pollo a la brasa which is like fried chicken with
french fries! After that we watched a movie called The Rescue of Ephraim which
is a movie like 17 miracles and it was super good. Oh and we had ice cream
during the movie! Then after that we had a gift exchange and got some cool
little things from the mission. Then we went home and were scrambling to try to
skype with our families. We went to our pensions house to try to skype but we
just encountered problem after problem until we finally got it to work like
three hours after we had set up to skype. So i ended up skyping my family at
like 11 00 here in Peru! We had stayed up till like 2 30 the night before and
now till like 12 00 the next night too but it was so worth talking with my
family! The next day we were so tired we didnt really do much but some baptismal
interviews. Then on Saturday after Christmas we had a baptism of three kids
which went pretty well although we realized that after we had filled up the font
that the water was draining and we didn't have any way to shut the drain so we
just ended up doing the baptism with the water filling the font at the same
time!

This week should be pretty awesome too with the New Year!! Were not sure
whose house were going to go to yet but i think were going to go to a members
house and have a little party and just hang out for a while!

Not much else to report down here in Peru other than that i might get to
email tomorrow too so if you guys want, send me an email before tomorrow and
hopefully i get the chance to respond! Hope you guys have a wonderful New Year
and try to keep your new years resolutions for at least two weeks before you
break them ;) Feliz Año Nuevo!

Monday, December 16, 2013

Hope you're all doing well and enjoying the weather because it is getting
really hot here and were just sweating all the time now! Christmas is in a week
and a half!

Well this week was pretty good i guess! The numbers don't reflect out
efforts but that's not what matters. We actually have been having some success,
we have two for sure dates for baptisms the 28 and we have two that are
tentative for the 28th as well! This week were going to challenge two more to
the 28th so if best case scenario we could have 6 baptisms on the 28th and on
top of the 3 we already had early this month that would be 9 baptisms for the
month of December! We are helping one of our investigators get married and i
think its kind of funny because 18, 19, and 20 year old kids are giving advice
on why people should get married and were not married. I could just see the
investigator being like "what do you know about marriage". But yeah we are
working on organizing an activity do hermano Julio can get married and get
baptized and if he does get baptized then the whole family will be members and
they can put the goal to go to the temple! We have hermana Graciela who is just
awesome! She just needs to talk to her husband and let him know but she wants to
wait until he comes home from Lima to talk to him because she is hard of hearing
and cant really talk on the phone! The two set dates that we have are two little
girls, Noemi and Shantal, and they live with their grandmas because their
parents died. We are going to invite their cousins to be baptized too this week!
The work is progressing in La Pradera!

We are looking for another capilla for our branch because we have so many
people that on Sundays there's like 30 people standing because we don't have
enough chairs! We have more people attending than almost every single ward in
this stake but yet were still a branch! Soon they will build a capilla here
though and that will be awesome for this branch!

The food is sometimes hard to eat... For breakfast sometimes we get tuna
with onions and bread. Thats what we had this morning and its not really the great thing to eat on the morning, or at all for that matter. We eat sooooo
much rice! Two meals a day everyday we have rice! Although today for lunch we
had pizza! Every Monday from now till the end of the change in January we are
going to my comps old areas to say goodbye to the people nd one of his old
pensionistas made us some pizza and it was so good!! We eat rice with
everything and we actually have lomo saltado a lot but its not nearly as good as
it is in the U.S.

My companion is really funny! He likes to give massages to but he gives
really really hard massages and they hurt!! He also likes to sing too! He knows
quite a bit of English too! Sometimes he'll tell me things in English about the
people were teaching and its pretty funny. He sounds really funny when he speaks English and i wonder if i sound as weird as he does when i talk in Spanish! Its
kind of nice that he knows a lot of English because i can ask him about words in Spanish and he knows what they are in English!

Hope everyone's doing super well! Have a great week and if i don't get to
email this next week than i hope you all have a merry Christmas!!

Monday, December 9, 2013

This keyboard that im using doesn't have any of the letters on it and is
very dumb so i hope that you guys can understand me! Well this week i got a
new companion and his name is Elder Quilpatay from Argentina! Hes actually
really cool and hrs a funny guy! He goes home at the end of this transfer which means that i will be in La Pradera at least until march which is cool because i
like my area.

Since Elder Bunker left i have had to speak so much spanish its
ridiculous but it has made me realize how much spanish i have learned in such a
short amount of time which is awesome! This change is going to be really fun
because were going t try to plan a Christmas activity in our branch and were
also going to have an activity with all the missionaries who are close to us and
that should be really fun! My comp says Christmas in the mission is the best so
im stoked for Christmas!

Stories for this week aren't to interesting but there was thus little kid
who ran by us crying when we were walking towards one of our visits and then
he turned around and came up behind us and hr grabbed my hand and just started
walking with us and so we started talking to him and we were trying to find
out why he was crying and finally he told us that he was scared of a dog. so he
kept walking with us for a while and then he freaked out and pointed at this
dog and said that's the dog and it was this tiny little dog that this little kid
was freaking out about so that was pretty funny.

Nothing much more to report. Sorry for the little amount its super hard to
type on this keyboard.

Monday, December 2, 2013

This week has been pretty
awesome!! The three baptisms went well and we had a new record of 112 people in
the chapel and it was crazy because there were like 30 people standing up who
didnt have seats! We also just got a podium and a speaker and microphone for
our capilla and its pretty awesome, although were in the process of looking for
a new chapel and were going to have to move rooms too. The one thing thats kind
of a bummer is that we have transfers tomorrow and Elder Bunker got transferred
but we dont know where yet. Its kind of a bummer because everythings just
starting to take off and then he got transferred. We find out tomorrow where hes
going and who my new comp will be. Elder Bunker will probably be a zone leader
somewhere. The thing that im most scared about is that i have to lead my area
for the first couple of weeks because my companions not going to know the area!
So im going to be the senior comp in a way for the first couple of months even
though ive only been out for 3 months! Its going to be a good experience though
and everything should go fine. So today were going to go around to everyone and
say goodbye.

Today my first zone leader
Elder Esquivel is going home and i sent some letters with him for hm to put in
the mail when he gets home so there should be some letters there soon within
this week! The weeks are going by so fast i cant believe it although when i
think that i still have 21 months left it feels like an eternity! We have been
getting a lot of references lately from the members and so hopefully we should
be able to see some more baptisms in the ward and maybe soon they be able to
build a chapel in La Pradera. We have 200 members now but only about half of
them are attending church so if we can reactivate a lot of them then we can get
a chapel here soon. We only need more priesthood holders and we need people to
pay there tithing and thats about it. We have been working tons with the
members and things are going well so we should keep getting more and more
references of people we can help. We have 4 people who are ready and want to
get baptized but they need to get married, so were going to try to help them
get married for christmas time!

Nothing much more happened this
week, except now that my comp is getting changed im going to have to do a ton
more talking!! That will be good for me though! Hope all of you are doing
spectacular and that you all have a fantastic week! Love you all!

Monday, November 25, 2013

We had Elder Russel M. Nelson and his wife and Elder Waddell
and his wife come speak to us!! We all got to the chapel super early to get
good seats because the whole Chiclayo mission and the whole Piura mission was
there for this talk. Anyways we got there like 2 and a half hours early and i
so we just started talking with friends from the CCM and such and then i also
saw Elder Harper!! That was cool and we got to catch up on some things and talk
about how mission life is! There were 420 missionaries at this conference and
it was super cool because when Elder Nelson walked in everyone stood up and
then we all got to go shake his hand along with Elder Waddell! It was such a
cool experience! All of their talks were super good! A main theme was about how
there are people on the other side of the veil praying for us a missionaries
and as members of the church to find their ancestors and teach them the gospel
because they are waiting to receive the ordinances but they cant. When we help
people find the church we are not only helping them but we are also helping
people on the other side of the veil too! Also something cool that Sister Nelson
said is that not only do we have 15,000,000 people on this side of the veil
praying for us, we have tons more on the other side praying for us too! The
Conference was super awesome!

This week we have been seeing some of the fruits of our
labor! We have three baptismal dates set for this Saturday. We have Jonathon a
9 year old, Livia whos living with our pension now, and this girl named
tathiana whos been taking the discussions or charlas as we call them in Peru
for a couple months now and shes finally getting baptized so were stoked! This
week also we have another conference with an area seventy which should be
pretty cool!

Christmas is just beginning to emerge here. They are putting
up this giant christmas tree right now in a plaza in the center and thats going
to be awesome! The main food here fro christmas time is called Paneton. Its
this bread with red and green gummy things and raisins in it. It comes in a
package almost like a cake and they eat sooo much of it here during christmas
time! Weve already eaten a lot and it istn even December yet. Elder Bunker and
I put up the christmas tree and somewhat decorated it!! There are a couple of
houses that have lights already and so things are starting to look like
christmas although it doesn't feel like it because here were just entering
summer and its hot!

Not much else to say for now! Hope you guys have a fantastic
week!! Love you all!

Monday, November 18, 2013

This week was pretty good in general! It seems like it went by super duper
fast! Ive almost been in my area for a month already! Christmas is coming up
soon and im stoked for that!

This week i did a work visit with one of the zone leaders for a day and
that was pretty cool! Hes fluent in Spanish and English and so he helped with
some Spanish while i was there. While i was there we had a really good day, we
had 6 lessons with a member present! Nothing else too interesting this week,
although we did have a seminar with all the gringos in the closer parts of the
mission which was cool. It was a seminar on how to adjust to missionary life and
how to deal with stress and we watched a video about how when were doing
missionary work we are bringing to pass the salvation of souls and how sometimes
its not easy and it was never easy to bring to pass the salvation of souls and
it wasn't easy for Christ! We watched a video and in it Elder Holland said that
when people yell at us spit on us slam doors on us that we are standing shoulder
to shoulder with Christ, that we are walking a very small part of the path that
he walked to bring to pass the salvation of our souls and i thought that was so
awesome and it makes me want to be a better missionary! That seminar was also
cool because i got to see all of the people in my district from the
CCM!

In two days Elder Nelson is coming to speak to us!!! Thats going to be so
cool! Also the night before we have four more missionaries that are coming to
stay with us in our chapel house which is going to be pretty
sweet!

Me and Elder Bunker are working well with each other, were meeting most of
our goals and getting the new branch here started off right! They just organized
a lot more stuff and they called a bunch of people to new callings on Sunday and
that was really cool to hear all of those people getting called to positions.
Some of the people are starting to come back to church too which is awesome! We
have a baptismal date for a nine year old named jonathan for the 30th of November and we should have a couple more dates soon too because we have a
couple people that only need one more little thing and then they can get
baptized so were working with the president of the branch to help them resolve
their problems and then we should be able to help them get baptized pretty soon.

Some days are better than others with the Spanish. Some days i feel like i
just cant understand anything and the words get all mixed up in my mouth and
then other days i feel like i can understand almost everything and I will use
words and sentences that i didn't know i knew how to say! Its really cool when
that happens! Elder Bunker said i know so much more than he did and he read me
some of his journal entries from when he had about one month on the mission and
he said that it was so hard for him to understand people so hes helping me learn
faster.

We think that Elder Bunker got fleas in his bed which really is a bummer
cause hes gotten bit so much and Ive gotten bit a couple times but hes washing
all of his stuff today so hopefully the flea problem will go away soon. Its
getting hotter and windier which is crazy because it was already pretty windy
before! The wind stinks because then all the dust is blowing everywhere. In the
morning well see people out sweeping their dirt and watering their dirt so its
not flying everywhere.

Today were going to teach our pension how to make breakfast burritos! After
that were going to play some volleyball with some of our investigators which
should be a blast! Other than that everything's all good down here in Peru! Hope
all of you have a fantastic week! Love you guys

Love,

Elder Jarman

The second picture is of some of the church members at our game night that
we do every Friday.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Things are great here in Peru. Its starting to
get hotter here which is gonna stink but its all part of the adventure!

On the 20th Elder Nelson will be visiting the Chiclayo mission and
all of the missionaries will be in the same place so hopefully i will get to see
baylor! Also it will be the first time in the history of the mission that every
missionary in chiclayo will be in the same place! Some of the places are 10
hours away so all the missionaries in the whole mission haven't all been in the
same spot at the same time so that's kind of cool.

Today is p-day and
we went to the institute building to play soccer for a little while. We were
going to go play soccer on the beach but not everyone wanted to. After we played
for a while we went to one of the pensions houses whos pretty wealthy for Peru
and we had a birthday party for one of the sisters and we had hamburgers and
tons of candy and cake! When we sang and the girl blew out the candles its a
tradition in Peru that the birthday person has to take a bite out of the cake so
she went to take a bite out of the cake and people shoved her face in the cake!
After that we went to take a big group photo on the roof and i guess its another tradition in Peru too but while we were taking pics the zone leaders
took eggs and flour and smashed the eggs on her head and then poured flour on
her hear too! It was really funny but i got flour and egg on me too!

We are starting to work more with the members in the ward because
we feel like there are some people who are so close but they just need more
friends in the church so were working with five member families and each of them
have their own mission plan with names of people so we think the work is about
to take off in this area. We have an investigator named Graciela who wants to
get baptized but she needs to get the okay from her husband but thats taking a
while because he works in Lima and only visits once a month so soon she should
get baptized. We have another investigator named Aurora who wants to get
baptized too but she needs to get permission too. Another one named Veronica who
is practically a member but she cant get baptized until she gets married so were
working on that. We have another one whos named Tathiana whos progressing really
well she just has loads and loads of questions but things are going well with
her. Another one is Palma who needs to get married too and then he can get
baptized. The biggest problem here is that people aren't married! If people were
married we would have so many more baptisms in this area. Anyways were teaching
about 17 lessons a week and we try to get 9 with members every week. This week
we made almost every single one of our goals so were doing well and were starting
to work well with each other and soon we should see some more growth in this
area.

Not much more to share about this week! Hope all of you have
a wonderful week! Love you all! Thanks for all your support! Ill try to get some
more pics but were not really supposed to take pictures because well most likely
get our cameras stolen. But yeah ill try to get some
more.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Hope everyones doing fantastic! I think im starting to get
used to it out here. Showering with cold water isnt too bad anymore and im used
to it when theres like 15 mosquitos in the bathroom in the morning. Im still
not used to all the dust though! There is so much dust and it always gets in my
eyes. Other than that and getting used to the food its kind of cool out
here.

The culture is a little weird though. For the most part they
have really basic houses which look really small from the outside and then you
walk inside and there's a bunch of different rooms and then out of nowhere you'll
see a fairly nice TV with a big sound system attached to it. Also they sometimes
have some pretty nice phones. Their priorities are not focused on their
houses. I don't know its just kinda weird.

The weeks are going by really fast out here. We have like
three investigators that are ready to be baptized but they need to get married
first. Sometimes its hard to talk during the lessons because i dont really know
what theyre talking about because they talk super fast and slur their words but
after a while i should be able to start to understand what they are saying. So
sometimes ill only say a couple things to the investigators the entire lesson. Some of the lessons though i can understand almost everything and there will be
stuff that i want to say but i dont know how to say it yet.

Im not sure if elder bunker will be with me all the way
through my training but i hope he is. Our little family branch in La Pradera
just became a rama, so now were officially a ward and we have our own bishop
and everything now. Only 50 more members and we become a barrio. Time to get to
work.

Im not sure if the pictures wroked because the computers
here are a little funky, and the keyboards stink which is why everythings all
messed up, but if the pictures worked then they are of my first zone and my room
and the view from my room window.

Monday, October 28, 2013

I don't have much time to email anymore because i have to send a letter to
the mission president but ill try to explain everything and there probably wont
be pictures this week, sorry.

Okay so well start with the worst and then get better. The worst thing that
happened this week is that i ended up getting food poisoning on Friday night at
like 1 30 in the morning and it was just down hill from there. So i rested until
like 12 30 on Saturday and then we had to go somewhere. My stomach still feels a
little funky but i think i just need to get accustomed to the food. Then a day
and a half later my comp ( Elder Isaac Bunker) started feeling funny and now hes
sick too so it had to be something that we both ate.

My Spanish has got a long way to go.. I got out here and could understand so
much less than i thought i was going to be able to understand, But my comp says
i know a lot more than he did when he came out here and hes been out here for 17
months and hes fluent so its cool to think that im going to be like that in a
couple of months. Whats hard for me now with the Spanish is that i hear the
words in Spanish and translate it into English in my head which takes a lot of
time and so i miss the next couple of words so when i start to think in Spanish
then ill be doing a lot better. Plus i need to learn all the slang and different
words in their dialect of Spanish which they call casteano.

Now were getting to the better stuff. The flight to chiclayo wasn't bad but
we had to get up at like three in the morning to get on the plane so the next
day i was super tired. We got to chiclayo and then met our mission president and
our mission presidents wife who are really cool. Then we had a couple of
meetings and we heard the changes and then finally we got our areas and our
comps. So right now I am in the Chiclayo Central zone and my area of proselyting
is called La Pradera. Its a small place outside of the city so everythings
really small and poor and there's trash everywhere and it smell all the time. We
live in a chapel house so we have our tiny little room up stairs where me and my
companion sleep and study and then all throughout the house is a couple other
rooms for church and downstairs is their version of a chapel. Ill try to send
pics next week cause i dont have time this week. Apparently there are some scary
stories about our chapel house which is kind of creepy but i try not to think
about that. There is this spot in the house where the tile is cracked and its
hollow underneath there so thats a little creepy and all throughout the night it
sounds like somebody is opening the door to our room because of the wind. Oh and
the bathroom is tiny and the shower is heated by electricity but its not really
heated so we take cold showers every morning. The CCM was luxury compared to
here Other than that my area is awesome and our pension is super cool and very
understanding too. We haven't had too many weird things yet, the weirdest thing
was probably a full fish without the head.I got one of the bones stuck in my
throat which was a little scary but i got it out. The one thing that i don't like
very much is that we give our laundry to her once a week but then get it back
three days later so its like our laundry gets done once every ten days so im
going to need to buy some more socks somewhere. Me and Elder Peabody are in the same dstrict so we see each other like once a week. My comp is the district
leader so im going to have to go on day changes with other people which will be
pretty cool.

We finally had P-Day today after a super long time and we had a zone activity and played games and then ate a really good meal of steak and beans and
rice and fried bananas.

Santa came exactly two months early with three packages!!! Thanks!

But now for the best part of the week! We had a baptism!! I didn't really
help much with teaching them because i just got to the area but me and my
companion baptized and 11 and an 8 year old. My first baptism was Pedro
Alexander and it was in Spanish!

Hopefully there will be some more baptisms soon! Hope you are all doing
well. Sorry again for the lack of pictures and sorry if i don't get to responding
to your emails.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Alls good in Peru! This is the last time that ill write from the CCM. On
tuesday we ship off to chiclayo which im super excited for! Im not sure when ill
get to write next because the paper we read was really wierd but we might not
get to write for a little while. Anyways, ive gotten so close to all the people
in my district that its gonna be pretty sad to leave but thank goodness that all
the guys in my ditrsict are going to chiclayo too, only the hermanas are going
to a different mission.

This week has been pretty awesome! Our teachers are starting to pile on the
studying because we leave in a couple of days, but other than that soccers been
fun and the days have been flying by. We challenged some of the latinos in the
CCM to soccer and whoever lost had to give massages to the winner and we won 4
to 1! There are some latinos here that are pretty good but i think our district
is the best at soccer and volleyball!

Elder Ruiz my companion got a package but its at a post office in Lima so
were gonna have to take a Taxi tomorrow, just the two of us with the little
spanish we know, through Lima to try to get his package from the post office so
that should be an interesting experience. The latino room mates in our room have
been staying up late at night and they talk quietly but that only lasts for like
10 minutes and then they start talking loud again so havent really been sleeping
well the past few nights but its whatever.

Were supposed to prepare a talk every sunday on a specific topic and during
sacrament meeting the branch president calls some people to speak and so i had
to speak last sunday on the book of mormon and were supposed to do as much as we
can in spanish. So i got up and gave a five minute talk in only spanish!! So the
spanish is coming along pretty well i guess. Even then mission president said
that my talk was really good and the branch president asked me how many years of
spanish i took because my accent was spot on! Thats was pretty cool!

Not much else happened this week, but im sure that there will be lots of
stuff ot talk about next week!

Hope all of you are doing fantastic!

The first picture is of me and my district with our night teacher, and the
second one i tried to recreate the one of baylor in the same spot but i dont
know how well i did with that

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Everything's going great up here! Ive been out for 1 Month already and its
feels like its only been a couple of days!! Were are now the advanced group in
the CCM! Only two more weeks and then im out in the field! Just when i feel like
im starting to get used to the CCM im about to go out into the field and then it
will be a whole new experience!

Conference was awesome! It was a little hard to stay awake for all of the
sessions but i managed to do it! 80,000 missionaries!! And im one of them! Thats
pretty crazy how many there are now, the work really is hastening!

Last week my hair was getting a little long and i didnt really want to wait
another week till the guy came to the CCM to get it cut so me and my room mate
got our haircut by one of the latinos in their dorm room!! It was a pretty funny
experience! There were a whole bunch of people in there taking pictures and
laughing!

We got new latino room mates today and they seem pretty cool so far, they
dont speak any english so that will be interesting for the next two weeks but it
will be a good way to learn more spanish! They are both going to Chiclayo too!
Me and elder Ruiz and my other two roomates were gonna play a joke on the
incoming room mates but we decided not to. We were gonna wrap up one of out room
mates, Elder Passey, like in the picture i attached and then put duct tape on
his mouth and lay him on the floor so that when the latinos came in the room
they would freak out! They didnt end up coming in at night so its a good thing
that we didnt do that!

We get to go out proselyting again this saturday which will be awesome and
hopefully i will know a little more about what they are talking about than last
time! I can wait to get out into the field!

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Everythings all good here! I miss all you guys! Its getting harder to wake
up every morning and to stay awake during all the studying, but its definitely
awesome! Nothing really interesting happened this week, except for some people
came down from chiclayo and we taught them some lessons about the gospel and
talked to them a little bit about chiclayo! Everyone says its really hot there!
Here at the CCM is overcast quite a bit of the time and its basically the
perfect temp outside!

The latinos in the CCM only stay for two weeks and the North Americans stay
for six weeks and its been pretty cool to get to know some of the other people,
nobody that i know of is from california except for the two others in my
district. The two weeks in between the mini transfers fly by. It feels like they
just got here yesterday and now all the latinos are leaving in a couple of days
and then well be the veterans here at the CCM. Im sure that time will fly by too
and then ill be in the field!!

The temple today was as always really awesome! We went to the temple store
again and i got some scriptures in spanish and a spanish hymn book. My spanish
is coming along pretty well, i can almost teach a whole lesson in spanish and
say all that i want to in spanish! I feel like im finally starting to get the
hang of teaching also.

Last sunday we had fast sunday because general conference is this week and
its was a pretty tough fast sunday. Im super excited for general conference this
week because it means a whole bunch of english this weekend!! Whenever we have
firesides as a whole group the North Americans all have to wear headphones to
translate it in english which kind of stinks. So yeah im really looking forward
to general conference.

Nothing else interesting here. The foods a whole lot of chicken and rice.
They are doing some construction at the CCM or something and there are these
really deep holes all over the place so we cant play volleyball. This week one
time when we were playing soccer i got kneed in the calf and i got a huge dead
leg and i was limping around for a couple days and that was pretty painful.

Everyday is just studying and the some more studying and then some teaching
and then some more studying and then repeat. All this studying is so awesome! I
did not know you could learn so much in such a short amount of time!

Thursday, September 26, 2013

I apologize in advance but the emails while im in the CCM will start to get
boring and shorter because we literally do almost the same exact thing everyday!
Hours on end of language study and companion study and personal study and yeah
lots of studying!

One cool thing we did get to do this week was we got to go out
proseliting!! It was a really neat and humbling experience! We went to a place
in Lima called Canto Rey and we went out with lation companions and a member and
went to members house who were inactive to try to reactivate them. Altough we
didnt actually get to talk to any members because all the addresses were wrong,
oh and the addresses here are written in chalk and they are super confusing and
so its like impossible to find someones house, but it was still cool! It was
really humbling in two ways, one becuase i thought i was starting to get the
hang of spanish and then i heard the natives talk... and two, the people here
are really poor! There was trash all over the place, there were marks on the
walls where you could tell people had peed and the houses were super small and
very poor! There are actually quite a bit of people that know the elders because
everywhere we go there are poeple that say hey elders and also when were on our
P-day in Lima a lot of people will honk at us and say elderes out their windows!
All in all presliting was a good experience!

I was in a trio companionship with Elder Peabody and Elder Ruiz, but then
someone in our district went home and so now just Elder Ruiz is my companion. We
got new people today in the CCM and new room mates who are north americans as
well. We havent really talked to the them much yet becuase we went to the temple
today, but they seem pretty cool! I think the next time that i go to the temple
that i will be able to do the whole session in spanish! The last two times we
went we had headphones and this time i listened more to it in spanish than i did
in english and i could understand almost all of it so next time im going to try
to do it in spanish!

Another cool thing that happened this week was and earthquake. Me and my
companion were sitting in a room by ourselves preparing for a lesson and then i
felt this little rumble and i told my companion and then it started to get
stronger and we were all like earthquake!! The quake lasted for like 30 seconds
but it wasnt very strong where we were. Im not sure but i think i heard someone
say that it was a 7 in Areqiupa!

Nothing else exciting happened. If you have any questions about anything
let me know!

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Hey guys!! love you all and thanks so much for the emails
and the letters! It was a weird feeling at the airport as soon as I got through
security I waved once and then all you were just gone! Once we got to Peru
immigration and customs didn’t take long at all which was awesome! We took a
bus to the MTC which was like 20 minutes away from the airport and it was a
pretty crazy bus ride! I heard more honking in an hour here than i do in like a
year at home. On the way to the CCM we saw some fast food restaurants which was
a relief and we also saw some really poor parts of town, but some of the people
here say that what we saw is nothing compared to what well see when we go proseliting
for the first time on Saturday. We got to the CCM at like 1 and got a packet with
our schedule which is jam-packed everyday and we also got our companions. I’m
in a trio companionship which is pretty neat, with Elder Ruiz and Elder
Peabody. When we got to our room there was a not on our door from our roommates
that was kind of intimidating but when we finally met them later the next day
we found out that they were really cool!

The first couple of days were pretty tough just getting into
the rhythm of things. We wake up at 6:30 and get ready for the day. The showers
here are weird, they are either boiling hot or they’re freezing and once you
find the happy medium it lasts for about 10 seconds before it gets really hot
or rally cold again. Breakfast is at 7 and every morning we eat runny eggs
yogurt and toast and that’s about it, sometimes well get lucky and get some
pancakes which are super good but they’re better than yogurt and eggs. Then
well have some language study and some gospel study and then well have lunch.
For lunch we always have rice and something like fish or steak that is like
leather it’s so tough or chicken or something like that. We have rice twice a
day every day of the week so when i get back please don’t make any rice! After
lunch well have personal study where we can study anything we want, and after
that is my favorite part, Physical Activity!! For physical activity we play
volleyball sometimes but we usually play soccer and its pretty funny when we
play soccer because all you hear the whole time is Elder Elder Elder! After
physical activity well have some more language or gospel classes and then
towards dinner time we have been teaching lessons to teachers here and its
almost all in Spanish! The Spanish is coming back to me much better than I
thought it was going to but we went out for P-day today and it made me realize
how much I have to learn! Then well have dinner which will be more rice and
then some more fish or beef or once we had lomo saltado! They do have french
fries quite a bit so that’s pretty good! After dinner we teach more and then
have one or two more classes and then we do daily planning with our companions
and then we get ready for bed and write in our journals and go to bed at 10:30
and then repeat it all over again.

My district has 11 people in it and they’re all really
awesome! Everyone is really cool and funny and its fun to watch the people in
my district learn Spanish so fast! It really shows how much the spirit plays a
role in learning a language! My room is on the 3rd or top floor of the dorms
and my room mates are super funny as is my whole floor! one of my room mates is
full of stories and tells us stories every night while were getting ready for
bed and people play jokes on each other and everyone’s laughing the whole time,
its really awesome!

Adjusting to the food is not too bad. In the CCM the people
say you either have the siempres, when you always have to go or the nuncas,
when you never have to go and at some point everyone gets something. I have
been doing well with the food, for now at least. One thing that’s weird is that
some of the toilets here don’t have seats on them! Some of the food has been weird
here and some of it has been really good! One of the weird things that I’ve
eaten is a granadia. It doesn’t taste too bad but its a fruit that you crack
the skin and peel it open and it looks like a spider laid like 100 eggs inside
the fruit!

We had P-day today which was super awesome! we were supposed
to do some stuff for our visas on Tuesday but it got rescheduled to Thursday so
we were all pretty upset that our P-day was going to get cut short by 2 hours!
Also we found out that it overlapped with our email time and our laundry time
so we were all freaking out! On the day of P-day after we had gone to the
temple we were on our way to lunch today and we found out that the interpol got
rescheduled again so its tomorrow not and we got all excited because we were going
to get to write and do laundry! Today we had to wake up at 5:45 which was a
bummer but it was all worth it because we got to go to the Lima temple today and it was so cool!! It’s a
very small temple and the session was in Spanish! After the temple we went to
store and bought some snacks and some other stuff and our chaperones showed us
where the temple store is so we can go there next time and get some Peru scripture
bags and some other cool things! We didn’t have much time out of the CCM today
but it will be better next time and I can’t wait to go to the temple again! We
got some knock off soccer jerseys for really cheap and they’re pretty sweet! I
took pictures but I don’t have the plug for the camera so i can’t send any
pictures unless i can find a card reader the next time we go to the store.

The CCM is awesome so far! I learned how to pray and to bear
my testimony in Spanish! The days go by like weeks because we do so much stuff
in a day but the weeks go by like days. I can’t wait to get out to mission
field now im so excited for that!

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Hey guys!I only
have ten minutes so it will be very short for now. All went well with the
flight and we all got here safely. I know two people that are here with me in
the CCM which is awesome! It’s nice to not feel completely alone. When we got
here all of the sudden everything was in Spanish and it was like wow this is
going to be tough. We took a bus from the airport to the MTC and all along the
way were these really poor looking buildings and it was very humbling to see. I
appreciate what I have much more now seeing the conditions that these people
live in. It still hasn’t really hit me yet that I’m on a mission, it feels like
I’m on one of those mini-MTC trips but I’m sure that it will start to set in
soon especially because we received our name tags today. All is well so far and
I’m not positive yet but I think P day will be on Thursday for now. Love all of
you! More to come when I have more time!